GRcade

Knoyleo wrote:
Skip to 6:25 for the bit I mean.

It's the moment the game went from being a dumb/fun Indiana Jones style romp, to a weird existential place that just didn't fit in. Never mind the fact that Nathan/the player literally have to kill all those people in game or just stop playing. It didn't ruin the game for me or anything, but it stood out as a weird moment for me. It felt like such an odd turn, going from a game that was basically just saying, "these are the bad guys, they are unambigously bad and here is a gun, go adventure!" to one that suddenly decides, "actually, they were human too, what's wrong with you?



It's gone on to spawn a load of stupid navel gazing gooseberry fool from games that think they're super deep, by making the player question the morality of what they're doing, while giving them no systemic means to approach games in a different way, and just try to make you feel bad for playing them, I guess? Games that put you in a situation where you can either choose to do an objectively horrible thing, or just switch off.

Spec Ops is a game that often gets lumped in with this criticism, but that game handled it differently. It set out to be a send up of the gruff military shooter, and deliberately gives you wrong information about the people you are about to harm, so that when it pulled the rug out to call you a bad person, it was because it had deliberately misled you. You've done a bad thing, but you did it because it was framed as a good thing, until eventually you're doubting everything the game tells you.

But by and large, most games that tell you to press X to do a murder, then chastise you for doing the murder the game told you to do, are bullshit.

Drumstick wrote:Time Trialling in F-Zero GX back in the day. I messed up the final corner of the final lap of Drift Highway and promptly launched my wavebird into the wall.

Victor Mildew wrote:

Preezy wrote:

Jenuall wrote:That's not even a git gud situation though, it's just plain gooseberry fool!

Obviously didn't buy the anti wall clip armour, strawberry floating rookie scum

Time to wheel this out again

Tafdolphin wrote:

KK wrote:Did they seriously make Ninja Gaiden 2 harder than the first one?

Ironhide wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:

Jinpachi from Tekken 5 and Tengu in DOA2 were far cheaper bosses imo

Tafdolphin wrote:I agree with all of this. In fact, it appears this single moment has become key to Naughty Dog's identity but they don't have the self-awareness to actually use it in any interesting ways.

OrangeRKN wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:I agree with all of this. In fact, it appears this single moment has become key to Naughty Dog's identity but they don't have the self-awareness to actually use it in any interesting ways.

I don't really see it as a thing in ND games because none of them pretend to offer any player agency over the narrative and all have predefined characters as protagonists, not player-inserts.

Uncharted 3 was not informed or altered by that moment in the previous game. Narratively that game is almost non-existent - it's just a series of action set-pieces with a story contrived to string them together (which if I remember correctly from interviews and the like reflects how it was developed). It's just as violent as 2 without addressing that violence, especially not framing it as the player's responsibility. I certainly then wouldn't call the end of Uncharted 2 a key moment when its direct sequel doesn't follow up on it.

Uncharted 4 does partially address the game's violence in that it deliberately reduces the combat to put more of an influence on the story and traversal, and the developers were certainly aware of the series becoming the poster child for discussions about "ludonarrative dissonance" (it's even the name of the trophy in that game for killing 1000 enemies). Again though I don't think that game ever tries to address Nate's murder sprees, or associate them with the player, or call into question their morality. The combat is just an aspect of the gameplay and we're just supposed to suspend our disbelief much like one would when watching an action movie where the hero kills a lot of people. Nate kills hundreds if not thousands of people in gameplay, but so what? The story doesn't address that. The overall theme of the story is not about that. I can't see how the game could be related to that moment at the end of Uncharted 2, let alone say that it was key to the studio's identity.

The Last of Us and it's sequel don't ignore the morality of their protagonist's violence like Uncharted, but they make clear the protagonists are not heroes but heavily flawed characters. Characters, importantly, being what they are. The player isn't made to feel guilty for their actions because they are never presented as the player's actions, only the character's. I think TLOU2 is incredibly interesting for the way it uses the forced perspective of a game's protagonist to control the player's own perspective and who they empathise with, which is an approach to the story only really possible through the medium of games, but not at all using the player agency aspect of the medium. Again then I don't see the guilting of the player as an aspect at all.

Cumberdanes wrote:Good lord that's a tough boss. You could probably put any fighting game end boss in there really like Gill from SF3 who since his super fills his health you have to win 3 rounds to actually beat him.

Jenuall wrote:But by virtue of being games the player will naturally align themselves with the actions of the protagonist in a way that doesn't happen in other media such as books or films. If another character is chastising the protagonist for their actions or behaviour then what else can the player do but feel that guilt being directed at them as well because they are the one who directed the player to act in such a way - regardless of the fact that no alternative is possible.

OrangeRKN wrote:

Jenuall wrote:But by virtue of being games the player will naturally align themselves with the actions of the protagonist in a way that doesn't happen in other media such as books or films. If another character is chastising the protagonist for their actions or behaviour then what else can the player do but feel that guilt being directed at them as well because they are the one who directed the player to act in such a way - regardless of the fact that no alternative is possible.

If a game wants to address me as the player it should stop being cowardly about it by using the protagonist as a proxy and instead talk directly to camera, just like Assassin's Creed II.

Technically it was addressing Desmond through the animus but hush

Karl_ wrote:every game should end with the scene in Cats where Judi Dench stares into the camera for an entire monologue

Jenuall wrote:Whilst it was definitely better than the first game I don't think I could subject myself to 4 goes at Uncharted 2.